National

National

Kelsie Abduljawad, of Doha, Qatar, graduated in December 2014 with a master’s degree in educational leadership that she completed online through Penn State World Campus. She has been able to apply what she learned in her coursework to help with decision-making for her school’s accreditation, professional development programming and curriculum.

Vijaykrishnan Narayanan, Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Engineering in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, provided a briefing last week on brain-inspired computing systems hosted by the Senate and House National Labs Caucuses.

The Pennsylvania Medicare Rural Hospital Flexibility (Flex) Program received an inaugural State Quality Ranking Award for quality and reporting for the state’s 13 Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs). The award was presented during a meeting held in Bethesda, Maryland, June 23-24.

For the first time ever, ESPN will be the official broadcaster of Special Olympics World Games, and a Penn State graduate has been part of the team in the partnership that made coverage of the 2015 games in Los Angeles possible.

Professionals, academics and students from across the nation and world will discuss opportunities and developments in the solar industry, including solar science and engineering, energy economics, public policy, education and energy efficient architecture at SOLAR 2015, the American Solar Energy Society's national conference, hosted this year by Penn State July 28-30.

Believed to be the oldest continuing education course in the United States, the Ice Cream Short Course traces its roots to 1892, when the then-School of Agriculture at the Pennsylvania State College began to offer a class in dairy manufacturing during the winter, when farmers had less field work and could be spared away from their farms. By 1925, ice cream had become so popular that the college created a separate course devoted exclusively to the subject.

A new professional development course for Penn State faculty and instructors seeks to give a more complete picture of what it’s like to be a military student. The course was developed at Penn State World Campus, which has continued to see an increase in military student enrollment.

Jim Pawelczyk, associate professor of physiology, kinesiology and medicine at Penn State, testified before the Subcommittee on Space in the U.S. House of Representative’s Committee on Science, Space and Technology on Friday, July 10 in Washington, D.C.

While it’s common knowledge for many people that Penn State is a global leader in science, technology and engineering, some don’t realize is that Penn State also is home to the longest-running university nuclear reactor in America. “Penn State Power: 60 Years of the Radiation Science and Engineering Center” — on display July 8-Aug. 19 in Sidewater Commons in Pattee and Paterno Libraries — honors the center’s longstanding reputation for nuclear energy education, research and service.

Penn State University Press Director Patrick Alexander has been invited to serve a three-year term on the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) board of directors. AAUP supports its membership of more than 130 nonprofit publishers through professional education, cooperative services and public advocacy, and member organizations publish peer-reviewed scholarship of researchers from around the world.

An estimated 8 million children worldwide live in orphanages and similar institutions, children of whom an estimated 80 percent have living parents or families who could look after them with the right assistance. A newly announced research partnership between British author J.K. Rowling's nonprofit children's organization Lumos and the UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre at National University of Ireland Galway -- and including Penn State's UNESCO Chair in Community, Leadership and Youth Development program -- aims to change that by transforming the lives of children living in orphanages.